Flawed reports and a weakened ‘We’

The UN issued two flawed reports last week. The distribution of one (about U.S. bombing in Afghanistan) was kept private. Information gathering for the other (about Israeli destruction in Palestine) was second-hand. Both thus lacked integrity. Because their author was the United Nations, humanity is left with a weakened sense of “We.”

Species survival deserves a sidebar … especially when the species is one’s own. Hence the following paragraphs from Anthro 101.

Our planet-wide concept of “We” is a work in progress, dating from the emergence of genus homo several million years ago. For 99 percent of that time, “We” meant one’s own group of hunter-gatherers, seldom more than 50 people. Everyone else was “They” – the Other and sometimes the Enemy. Research at Altamira, Spain’s most dazzling Ice Age art cave, hints at seasonal gatherings of several such groups (for commerce, ritual, or mate-exchange) – a briefly larger “We” – but these would quickly disband.

The advent of food-production enabled a bigger full-time “We.” This key economic development – domestication of plants and animals – led to both wonders and woes. One consequence has been greatly increased population. Another mixed blessing result is the organization of all these folks into more sizeable residential and political communities. “We” became the hamlet, then the village, town, city, and state. The family “We” became clan, tribe, nation, even empire. Since the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia, our largest normative “We” has been the so-called “nation-state.” (Note how the term brims with false confidence, as if its two parts necessarily go together. They don’t, as Afghanistan demonstrates daily.)

While political units have grown in size, often brutally, they have shrunk in number. (The trend is temporarily reversed whenever an empire – Roman, Ottoman, British, Soviet – collapses, but consolidation soon resumes.) At last count there remain nearly 200 different “We” nation-states, including the wannabes. Each has its own sense of “Us.” Each harbors suspicions towards “Them.” Suspicions generate wars. And regrettably we still wage these wars, as in Bob Dylan’s ironic anthem, “With God On Our Side.”

Hence the importance of two 20th century experiments aimed at a pan-human “We.” Begun after the horrors of World War I, the League of Nations failed in no small measure because our country declined to participate. Thus the special auspiciousness of San Francisco, a young and vigorous American city, as the site for founding the post-World War II United Nations, our second hope for an expanded “We.”

Despite inevitable growing pains, this hope survives as the only sustainable alternative to endless “Us/Them” conflict. Happily, the United States has hosted the United Nations since its 1945 inception. Unhappily, the two recent UN reports are flawed in a manner suspiciously convenient for U.S. policy and its Bush administration architects. The White House, of course, denies involvement. But is convenience merely coincidence?

First the UN report on U.S. bombing in Afghanistan. Compiled late last month, it deals with an Enduring Freedom operation on the night of July 1 in Uruzgan province, home turf of still missing Taliban leader Mullah Omar. Acting on a dubious tip and responding to allegedly enemy fire, our helicopter gunships strafed several villages. (The mind reverses to mid-1980s Afghanistan and Soviet helicopter gunships. “They” hovered overhead and let loose with impunity. “We” cowered under rocks and prayed.) America’s current effort in Afghanistan is better at technology than intelligence. Our information may be shaky, but – as on July 1 – AC-130 weapons generally hit what they aim at.

Next morning local Afghans counted 48 dead and 115 wounded. And claimed – main cause of disagreement – that the ground fire had come from a wedding celebration. (Pushtun nuptials can be risky. AK-47s are routinely fired skyward, and what goes up must come down.) We sent one inspection team, then another, and continued to deny responsibility. We talked of economic “assistance” – not to be interpreted as “compensation” – and even military protection for the area. Our president voiced “regret” by phone to Afghan president Hamid Karzai.

Two voices rang clearer. One, synonymous with integrity, belongs to National Public Radio sage Daniel Shorr who lamented our superpower inability to admit error and apologize. The other came from Afghan Foreign Minister Abdullah who demanded input on the conduct of future raids. “We have to be given a larger role. If things do not improve, well, I will certainly pray for the Americans and wish them success but I will no longer be able to take part in this.”

Then came the UN report, limited in distribution to government officials in Kabul and Washington. Yes, our two governments and the UN have worked as partners in Afghanistan, and some things are better kept mum. Even so, the suspicion is that American backsides are being covered big-time. The Times of London has leaked details of the report that speak to a cover-up stretching from Uruzgan to the Pentagon.

And what says President Karzai? Trapped in the middle, Karzai issued a denial which reads like an admission of hidden material: “The UN report [which he’s seen but we haven’t] was not correct. Lots of people had much misinformation. The second report, the official report, will be much more accurate.” Such talk suits his American protectors but not his Pushtun kinsmen. Thousands had already massed against the Kabul government. Their numbers are likely to grow. Karzai now stands in even greater danger of being stooged (see this column Aug. 5).

What’s true and what’s false in the bombing incident? How can we know unless the UN makes its report public? Even then, will the “second, official” version to which Karzai refers have been sanitized? Meanwhile – because the UN’s name is on this study – the world organization loses credibility. And our sense of global “We” is diminished.

On to the second UN report and (what Westerners call) the Middle East. In particular, to the West Bank Palestinian refugee camp of Jenin which Israel leveled in April. Main issue: Whether Israeli troops also massacred Palestinians and how many. Main UN finding: No evidence, indeed no mention, of “massacre.” Anxious to appear credible, the Israel-friendly New York Times refrained from gloating and called this report (are you ready?) “cautious.”

Fact is, the report itself lacks credibility for want of first-hand investigation. Israel not only wasted Jenin last spring; it closed it off – to humanitarian assistance, to most of the press and to UN and other international observers.

The UN protested. Israel stalled, and then declared that the UN was unwanted because of its supposed anti-Israel bias.

Suppose many UN members do entertain such a “bias”; how did this opinion form? Read UN Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338 – demanding that Israel withdraw from all occupied Palestinian territories. Consider Israel’s three-decade defiance of them.

Then consider how the U.S., whose signature is on those documents, has chosen not to insist on their enforcement.

The UN’s Jenin report is based on an information flow controlled by the Israeli government. No on-the-ground UN inspections, not even four months after the fact. Instead the report simply accepts the casualty figures provided by Israel’s “Defence Force.” Bush officials doubtless rejoiced. Israel promptly mounted a new West Bank attack, this time on the city of Nablus.

What really happened at Jenin? Does this second UN report state the real truth or merely a sanitized version? Given Israeli intransigence, we just don’t know. What we do know – and what the rest of the world finds appalling for Palestinians and self-destructive for Americans – is that Israel is energized by $2.1 billion of U.S. military aid per year. Every cent comes from your tax payments and mine. “We Americans” will continue to suffer the consequences as the Muslim world, understandably outraged, is radicalized against us. In the long run, I greatly fear, the noble experiment of Israel will suffer as well. Its moral eminence, once so remarkable, has suffered enormously already.

The United Nations is humanity’s noblest political experiment – despite waste, inefficiency, and endless palaver. Now two seriously flawed reports have been issued in its name. Was our current government, whose ideologues are so often disdainful of the UN, complicit in this erosion of institutional credibility? Did Bush pressure shape what’s meant to be a neutral process?

What’s your guess? Either way, “We Humans” lose hope when the UN loses stature.

Dr. Whitney Azoy, a cultural anthropologist and former U.S. diplomat in Kabul, has worked for 30 years with Afghanistan and the Muslim world. He was last in Afghanistan in May on a U.S. government contract.